Throughout the history of college basketball, who is the best coach of all-time – excepting John Wooden?

Wooden, by rote, is always universally acknowledged as the greatest college coach of all time, and it is hard to argue with 10 championships in 12 years – even, as it’s later been acknowledged, if he might have had the greatest “assistant” anyone ever had in the deep-pocketed presence of uber-booster Sam Gilbert.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of the question, here is one man’s Top Five – sans Wooden, who we’ll keep in a class by himself – as we count the hours down until we see if Butler, a team representing Wooden’s home state of Indiana, can finish off one of the nicest stories we’ve seen in sports in a long time – one that would serve as a nifty counter-balance to the Tiger Woods circus, which is set to resume around 2 p.m. in Augusta.

1. Mike Krzyzewski – win or lose tonight, he is the class of the modern era of coaching, where just reaching the final four has entailed winning four games – soon to be five, in some cases – which is the most any Wooden team needed just to WIN a championship. So in that context, K’s 11 Final Fours stand boldly alongside Wooden’s 10 titles.

2. Dean Smith – I don’t care that he only won two championships, and that both came thanks to last-minute fortune (Fred Brown’s errant pass, Chris Webber’s phantom time out). The man never had a down year, which is heightened when you see how Carolina struggled, post-title, this year under Roy Williams.

3. Bob Knight – Oh, how I wish he could have behaved himself better, because if he had not only would Knight have avoided the ignominy of gaining the all-time-wins mark in an outpost other than Lubbock, not only would his teams likely have won him at least one more title (rather than quitting on him, which became an annual ritual his last few years at Indiana), but his image and his legacy would better reflect the excellence he brought to his profession for so many years.

4. Rick Pitino – Some have said that anyone can win at Kentucky, a notion that was disproved by Billy Gillispie. Think about what Pitino did at Providence – taking the Friars from finished to Final Four in two years – and what he did right away at Louisville, reviving that wheezing program. Three different teams to the Final Four says a lot, even if he should have at least one other title to his credit – and who knows how many more if he’d just resisted the Celtics and stayed in Lexington this whole time.

5. Tom Izzo – And at the rate he’s going, he will climb this list quickly in years to come. Year in and year out Michigan State figures out a way to play late into March, often surviving in a way that makes you scratch your head until you recognize the man who’s standing on the sidelines.

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It’s about time: Kudos to basketball’s Hall of Fame voters who, given a third mulligan, finally got it right and elected St. Anthony of Jersey City’s Bob Hurley to the Hall of Fame. And kudos to son Danny who will take a stab at turning Wagner back into a Northeast Conference force to be reckoned with, too.

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They did what?: Is there anyone who doesn’t believe that Donovan McNabb isn’t going to put up some silly numbers next year when he faces the Eagles twice? How in the world can the Eagles trade him within the division? How?

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Can’t win ’em all: Today’s column, a reminder that even a team as carefully assembled and crafted as the Yankees can have flaws. In this case, a leaky bullpen.